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highly discouraged. And that’s putting it . . . Well. That’s understating the case so much it’s almost funny. They make sure there’s a high price to pay for not obeying a direct order. But if you’re willing to pay it . . . I guess I was willing to pay it. I guess whatever legal action they had in store for me suddenly seemed like the less bad thing. Of two very bad things.”
    I held the blanket even tighter to my chest. Felt the cold blades of fear slice my gut more deeply.
    “So they’re going to discharge you?”
    “Yeah.”
    “But you got to come home. So that doesn’t seem so bad.”
    “Except it won’t be an honorable discharge. Obviously.”
    “But if that’s all they can do to you . . .”
    But the minute I said it, I had a bad feeling it wasn’t.
    “It isn’t. They can also court-martial me.”
    “Are they going to?”
    “Not sure. There’s an investigation going on. Depends on what turns that takes. What kind of stuff comes out.”
    “And if they do . . . Then what? What could they do to you?”
    “Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it,” he said. “ If we come to it.”
    We both sat for a moment, not saying anything. Over and behind my brother’s head, I could see my miniature patch of the universe. It looked like a view of actual space travel in the dark. Which was the point. I tried to look at it the way I usually did. Like I was an astronaut flying out into infinity. Feeling tiny in comparison to the cosmos around me. I thought it would make the problem in front of me seem fleeting and small.
    It didn’t.
    “Why didn’t you go out on the raid?”
    “Because I didn’t think it was the right thing to do. Going into people’s homes in the middle of the night. Hauling families out into their front yards at gunpoint. I won’t go into a lot of detail, but if you can imagine a bunch of soldiers breaking through our door right now and doing the same to us . . . Let’s just say it was a very bad experience for everybody.”
    “But they did something wrong, right? What did the people do?”
    “Sometimes nothing. We were looking for insurgents.”
    “Insurgents?”
    “Rebels. People who wanted to fight us back. But part of the time, nobody in the house had done anything wrong at all. Anyway, it was a lot more complicated than just that. And I’m not going to dump it all on you, because I want you to get back to sleep. But I wanted you to know that I did what I did for a reason. I did what I thought was right. I don’t want you to be ashamed of me.”
    “I’m not,” I said.
    He sat a minute. Maybe taking that in. Then he rose to his feet.
    “I’m glad,” he said. And moved toward my bedroom door. “I know you look up to me.” Then he seemed to scramble to verbally walk back a statement that hadn’t come out right the first time. “I’m not saying you should or anything. I know I’m no hero. But me being ten years older and everything. I guess it’s kind of inevitable.”
    “You’re only nine years older.”
    “Aren’t you twelve?”
    “No. I’m thirteen.”
    “Oh. I missed a birthday while I was gone, huh?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Sorry. I should have called.”
    “It’s okay,” I said. Which was, at least on an emotional level, a lie. “You were busy.”
    “Even if I’d remembered, I still would have thought it was your twelfth.”
    I had no idea what to say to that. So I said nothing.
    He moved toward the door again. Put his hand on the knob.
    “Joseph,” I said. And he turned back. Waiting for it. “If you thought it was wrong, what they asked you to do, then I think it was wrong, too.”
    “You don’t know the whole story yet.”
    “I know you , though.”
    He paused for a time with his hand on the knob.
    Then he said, “Thanks. Now go back to sleep.”
    And with that he was gone.
    I didn’t go back to sleep. At least, not until nearly morning.

    At school the next day, I got an early glimpse of what would follow. What our lives